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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2021 12:51:29 GMT
The troopers could carry 50 rounds of carbine ammunition on their person and I think 25 rounds of pistol, with 50 in their saddle bags. Today, US Infantrymen probably carry at least 210 rounds of 5.56 on their person in 7-30 round magazines. People armed with a 9mm pistol carry 24 or so rounds of pistol ammunition in 2 magazines.
At a rate of fire of 9-16 rounds per minute for the Carbine, a person could run through his carried ammunition in about 10 minutes. Given he is using the pistol in close quarters combat, he probably won't have time to reload, so he shoots five times at the enemy and uses the last one to go to Fiddler's Green a good old fashioned canteen, where the souls of the cavalryman stop halfway down the trail to hell. Marching past, straight through to hell, the infantry are seen, followed by Engineers, Artillery, and Marine, for none but the souls of the cavalryman dismount at Fiddler's Green.
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mac
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Post by mac on Feb 9, 2021 8:20:39 GMT
"What else would he want from the trains?"
My contention is that Custer doesn't want anything from the trains, he wants Benteen to put himself in control of the trains so that they are safe. I believe that when Custer looked into the valley and saw the size of the village he realized that Reno would be forced to retire to Ford A and Custer wanted Benteen there, with the trains, for Reno as he falls back. That is why there is no mention of ammunition. At the point the note is sent Custer has not used any ammunition. Also Custer cannot seriously think Benteen is going to reach him in any timely way. Yes you are correct Ian. AZ has always, correctly, maintained that hits matter most and are bad medicine.
Cheers
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2021 10:31:54 GMT
I disagree violently disagree with your conjecture. The timing is wrong:
If Wagner's times and sequence are anywhere near correct, Reno is forming the skirmish line at 1205 Local. Martini is not dispatched until 1305 Local. Reinforcing Reno is reinforcing failure, even though Custer is about to fail himself. He does not know Reno has started to retreat before sending Martini. Boston reaches Custer at 1345 after which he continues toward MTC. If Custer was thinking defense, he would have already turned around. (Next event) We don't know what Boston told him and we don't know how he reacted, except he continued to go North.
This message, the poorly written means just what it says and though terse and poorly worded follows an order format. Benteen. Enemy Situation: Big Village. Mission: Get up here. Service Support: Bring the Trains. Sadly Be Quick and bring the trains are contradictory.
Implied: Martini knows the way and he will guide you.
The trains when you consider B Troop, the number of soldiers detailed to it, the packers and others is nearly as big as another battalion. It can, so far as things go, take care of itself. If he didn't want the trains, he wouldn't have mentioned them.
If he wanted Benteen to find Reno and defend, it would be because he was going to come back (the next event). The order would have been something like
Benteen. Big Village. Find Reno and fort up. Protect the trains. I'm coming back.
EDIT. I am slowly wading through that 226 page Ford D thread and come to the part where this order is discussed. I want to make it even simpler my point even simpler.
We don't know what Custer told Cooke, but Cooke wrote "come". I don't think even a rattled Cooke would mispell GO as COME. If you are late going home from work, you don't call up your kid on your cell phone and say to them "Come to your friend, Nicks house." you say "Go to your friend Nicks house."
If you want someone who knows where you are, like a child in upstairs and you are downstairs in the dining room with dinner, you say "Come to dinner." If you are out someplace else in a car and realize its almost dinner time, you might remark "Oh. It's time to GO to dinner" becuase you are NOT "there" where dinner is to be served.
A rose is a rose by anyother name. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. (note: Lifetime non-smoker, except for inhaling and exhaling the spew of four smelling poullutants my parents expelled.)
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Post by quincannon on Feb 9, 2021 15:02:56 GMT
You are correct Mike. The timing is wrong, and it is Wagner's timing that is wrong. Wagner tries to align his timing with the conventional theory, and is not open to anything but that objective.
I agree with Mac. Custer did not want the trains to come to him. We do not know what the hell Custer wanted. We only know what Cooke wrote in that message. If Custer was less than clear to Cooke then Cooke wrote what he thought Custer wanted. Anyone who was an experienced horseman, and who had passed over the terrain that Custer and his battalion traversed would know that those trains passing over that same terrain were hours away, and certainly would not be up behind Custer in time to influence anything but the post battle picnic, and celebratory square dance. Benteen following Reno's trail into the valley, and covering the movement of the trains is the only logical interpretation of that poorly written scribbling Cooke sent. We have evidence to that effect. Benteen was on his way to crossing Ford A and following Reno, when he was summoned onto the bluffs by arm waving, don't go there, follow us, Indian scouts.
You loaded fuel and ammo into your combat trains, and kept them close up, leaving all the rest of anything spare you owned in the field trains. The trains McDougal guarded with Company B and the detailed packers were field trains. Custer did not provide for company level combat trains, in that he did not detach a mule or two from the field trains carrying ammunition, and I would add medical supplies, and allocate them to each of his companies. That is not what you or I would do, and that was not the common practice of the day either. Pushing resources forward was not invented in the mid 20th Century. It was well known in that day, and used extensively.
The order
Big Village: So what. That is not a statement of the enemy situation. It is a statement of fact. London is a rather big village, but just saying "London" does not tell anyone the situation in London or what the enemy is doing in London, if in fact there is any enemy there.
Come quick: Come where quick. That is not a mission, at least it is not a mission statement without the appended "come where". Normally when your commander tells you to come, you come to him. That is granted, but nothing about this battle is normal, and it would be my advice to throw out all the "normal" you learned in your many years of service, and realize when you are dealing with Custer, and his band of sycophants he surrounded himself with. that a state of normalcy is not what you will normally find present. These guys, despite their previous service were pretty much amateur hour. Custer never had an independent command (one without adult supervision from above) that he was successful at.
In a perverse way I welcome you falling down the Wagner rabbit hole, and through Wagner's looking glass. You will find, I believe, that when you finally reach Oz and tear back the curtain, the Wizard, is just nothing but another guy who desires more than anything to grab the brass ring, and tries to make himself immortal by his words, and sadly fails
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2021 15:22:59 GMT
Well, I liked going down MTC long before I read Wagner. I am slowly coming around to questioning it. I understand why he went for Ford D.
I think when it comes to responding to an order, especially when the chips are down, you go back to normal in which "Come" means "Come to me." It's training and not just military training. You have said repeatedly since I joined and in the other threads I have read, you revert to training.
Martini knows the way back to where he Custer "was". Maybe he can even find it. Benteen is smart and can follow the trail, once he is close. And get destroyed.
I am suspicious of Wagner's times and I told him so. He explained why they are so precise. Any time is +/- 2 minutes (one minute on either side because of accuracy issues, even more back then. Maybe less now). Just like a 100m grid coordinate can be 200 meters off. Especially in the dark. In the forest. with No moon. And rain.
As to your Independent command, I always wonder what Buford, Merritt, or Upton would have done. Stayed along the Rosebud for starters, maybe. I admit I would be hard pressed to turn toward the enemy. Just as I am still be hard pressed to turn down MTC,, but I am questioning it. I would not be crazy to go North to Ford D. Back to Reno Hill is probably the best alternative, if I can't get to Ford A.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 9, 2021 15:43:17 GMT
"Come to me" OK, revert to training. A case could be effectively made that was exactly what Benteen thought he was doing.
Martini knew where he left Custer (maybe, perhaps, Steve and I have had some spirited discussion about that, never mind). Martini did not know however where Custer intended to go. Had Custer gone across Ford B, the quickest way to Custer was not to follow him, rather it was to cross at Ford A and come up behind Reno. Remember, when Martini arrived at Benteen, all Benteen knew was that he heard firing in the valley. That was the logical place to find Reno and Custer, was it not? "One cannot go far wrong if they ride to the sound of the guns" . Murat, or some other Frenchman said that. Is that not good advice? Is that not following your training?
You need to be suspicious of Wagner's times. He is trying to fit timing into that which cannot be timed with accuracy, in that he started out with the proposition that all the events contained in the conventional theory are correct, and in their proper sequence. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case. If one event did not take place, or an event is out of sequence, then the whole timing matrix is not worth what Porter thought of Pope, a bucket of spit. It is not like being a hundred meters away from the correct grid coordinate location. It is like not being in the right patch of woods, dark or no dark, rain or no rain.
You get an idea what Buford or Merritt would have done based upon their past performance, in the same manner you can divine what Custer would do, based upon his past performance. The ONLY thing Custer accomplished during his Civil War tenure was along with Merritt and McKenzie open the window and let a breath of air fall upon the U S Cavalry. Merritt and McKenzie's air was refreshing. Custer's air was full of fumes and pollution.
There was no reason at all that Custer could not return to Ford A, and be forced to take up a defensive position on Reno Hill or anywhere else. He had just covered that country moments before. He knew there was no enemy there. You would only need to adopt that course of action if you were hard pressed, and there was no one out there to press him but Wolf Tooth and his Merry Men on Sherwood, and they were not coming anywhere near him.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 9, 2021 15:46:59 GMT
As every knows, I have never felt easy about the notion of Keogh sitting on battle ridge with a battalion while Custer went scouting, so I am fully behind the idea that they all went to ford D. But watch this short film, you can even shift it forward five minutes to get to the runp of the battle. It had Custer spitting his battalion to attack from two points and gives a good explanation why L and C ended up on ridges fighting against Indians in deep coulee. Now before I attract the wrong kind of attention, I will stress that I am only using this as a better option to the Benteen of battle ridge.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 9, 2021 15:51:18 GMT
Chuck, the only think that stopped Custert from returning to ford A was his ego, well that and the idea that he with his 200 could still cause mega damage. Failure was not on his mind and neither was the helth of his regiment.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 9, 2021 16:11:46 GMT
The fellow that produced that video has quite an imagination. I notice no mention at all of the Cheyenne participation in the battle. Looking at lis little red markers one gets the impression that he does not know east from west with regard to Benteen.
Custer had an ego, and like all men with egos it does not often serve them well.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 9, 2021 16:37:37 GMT
While we have recently touched on training, it may be an appropriate time to look at the companies themselves.
Custer, until the regiment took the field was not really a regimental commander in the conventional sense. He was the post commander at Fort Abraham Lincoln. where he had Companies A, C, D, F, and I in residence and under his direct command. None of these companies did very well at LBH. The two companies (E and L) that arrived at Lincoln on the 17th of April from Fort Totten. Neither of them did all that well either. Companies B, G, and K arrived on 3 May from the Department of the Gulf where they had operated at company level, under their respective company commanders. All three performed well, especially Company K, about whom it could be argued that they actually saved the regiment (-) by their performance withdrawing from Weir Poinr. Then you get to Companies H and M, joining the regiment on 5 May from Fort Rice, where Benteen commanded. These two companies performed fairly well in battle, particularly on the 26th.
So when it comes to training I think it is evident that those companies that Custer directly commanded prior to the battle performed poorly. Those that fell under Custer's influence early, Companies E and L, were not much better, although L evidently put up a decent fight near the end. The rest of them did better than OK. They weren't the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Pointe du Hoc mind you, but OK none the less. Training matters, and leadership demonstrated during training, matters more.
I would also be remiss if I did not make two more comments.
Reno was completely out of his depth. His best day was at Kelly's Ford in 1863, but that was a long time ago, and had no business commanding a latrine detail in 1876, much less a battalion. He was not a bad man, as far as I can tell, but one whose capacity for command fell with him as time progressed.
Benteen, on the other hand, showed a remarkable stroke of combat leadership, when he laid down to take a nap in the mid point of the following days battle. By that one inspired act he said to his soldiers - All is well. I am here. Everything will be OK. Do not lose heart. Sometimes it takes what seem to be extraordinary, and easily misunderstood, measures to inspire troops. He did very well, in my less than humble opinion.
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mac
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Post by mac on Feb 10, 2021 9:40:54 GMT
Mike thank you for your reply, and the fact that you base it on actual data not opinion alone.
I note you object violently but I am 15000 Km away and therefore very brave.
I am, I suppose, being generous in some respects to Custer in my interpretation (I will get to this later) but let's forget that and go with what we know.
I think it is fair to say Benteen is trying to go to Custer. We know this because his first question to Reno is "Where is Custer?" Note: Come on.
AZ has ridden Benteen's scout and has confirmed that Benteen did not dawdle. Note: Be quick
Note: Big village..Enemy Situation: Big Village... exactly...this tells Benteen that he is wasting his time out where he is...being a competent officer Bneteen has already realized that and is returning when Martini finds him.
Note: Bring Packs P.S. Bring pacs. Leaves no doubt to Benteen that he is to bring the packs on to Custer.
Does Custer really want the packs brought on to himself?
This is where I give Custer the benefit of tactical insight.
If Custer expects the packs to be brought to him personally he is a tactical idiot (I do not think he is!). Remember it says packs not ammunition packs or any other kind of packs. According to Fred the packs arrive at Reno position around 3 pm (earliest), and at that time Custer is at Cemetery Ridge, Keogh is being wiped out. I do not believe Custer would be that far out in his timing. (Let's leave the whole Ford B thing for later.)
When Benteen arrives Reno has just exited the valley (not as Custer imagined, but Reno stayed too long waiting for his date (Custer) to arrive) and behold Benteen and later the packs arrive to save him. I say that was Custer's intent! "You will be supported".
What did Boston Custer know? We have no idea, but he was a young man and not a soldier so I think he probably knew nothing of any value to his brother.
I do think that as soon as Custer saw the village size he knew Reno would be unable to hold the valley, and expected him to be forced to retrograde to Ford A. He also knew that Benteen was a very competent soldier. Get Benteen in control of the packs to bring them forward and he will be around Ford A in time to make a decision. That is exactly what happened. Benteen was the promised support to Reno; there was no way he was ever going to reach Custer in any tactically useful time.
I believe Custer was intent on getting his force behind the village to pull off a typically aggressive victory.
Cheers
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2021 13:05:55 GMT
Opinions vs Facts. Both are find. So are assumptions, provided they are labeled as such and subject to change if they turn into facts or are refined.
I have a BA in history as well as my military schooling. I was able to turn my hobbies of military history, plastic model building, and wargaming into a 2nd career as a Constructive Simulation Systems Engineer and also got two certificates in Simulation and Modeling and System Engineering. No other advanced degrees. This makes some people look at me askance, but due to a pre-engineering background in HS and my first two years of college (but utterly defeated by fourth quarter calculous) switched from Engineering Science and Mechanics (a five year program I was attempting in four) to History, figuring if I wanted to use a lot of Greek letters, maybe I would learn ancient greek, but didn't. Anyway, all of this crap makes me approach problems very systemically.
Bring Packs. Yes, Custer wanted the Packs. Stupidly, he (or Cooke) stuck that in the order to Benteen. Just this morning, that made me think he doesn't know Kanipe went back to get the Packs because maybe TC ordered him or he went back on his on. Apparently, he didn't tell anyone TC sent him until after the battle. But, on the other hand, if he was a shirker (vs Straggler) or coward, that would be known and since he married his 1st SGT's widow and went on for long service, those things probably wouldn't have happened.
The amount of ammunition fired by Crook, by Reno in his attack and subsequent defense, at Isandlwana, and Rorke's drift shows even single shot rifles can burn through ammo very quickly, especially if marksmanship is poor.
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Post by yanmacca on Feb 10, 2021 20:16:26 GMT
Mike, are you aware of the trail the soldiers took when they first entered MTC? We did some work on it on and a trail cuts right and snakes up to Ney-Cartwright via Luce. There is a trail of spent cartridge cases which form a W shape and a few distinct firing lines. There was quite a bit of shooting before they even reached deep coulee.
The only people who actually mention Reno being in trouble are the three crows, they saw Reno being routed and told Custer, but then we have Martini who passed Boston on the trail, he saw or mentioned nothing of Reno getting beat.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2021 20:43:34 GMT
Not Really. Too much here to absorb quickly. Still reading the 226 page thread. Yeah. Martini didn't apparently tell him. Come to think of it, Benteen wasn't paying much attention to the Trains, since Kanipe had already told them to speed up and they are probably coming as quickly as they can. No need for Benteen to slow down and shepard them. They were pretty powerful as it was.
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Post by quincannon on Feb 11, 2021 3:15:30 GMT
Maybe I am on a tear this week Mike.
Your point about Kanipe. I know we discussed it briefly by PM, but it should be in the open and you gave me the excuse. Wagner thinks that Kanipe was a coward, a shirker, a bug out, whatever derogatory term you might wish to use. I fault him for that. First off it is character assassination of a dead man, who cannot defend himself. Second it spreads to the masses.
Wagner should know better. He served, and he should know that the Army first and foremost is a small family, a family that all know Crazy Aunt Agnes' secrets, every damned one of them, from her fornicating with sheep, to her recipe for grape jelly. It would be impossible in such an environment to keep any kind of reputation had he been in his time what Wagner accuses him of in our's, He would have wound up face down in a ditch on the far side of the hill were that the case. Instead as you point out, he married his friend the First Sergeant's wife.
It seems everything that Wagner learned from his time of service has been forgotten, OR, what is worse, perverted by an agenda driven narrative. Kanipe is important to understanding the story. Without him and his story, there is a hole big enough to drive a truck through, that causes misinformation to thrive, and conclusions to be jumped to that are nothing but illusions.
I don't think that note meant for Benteen to slow down and shepherd the trains. On the contrary, I believe it was directing Benteen to cover the trains, keeping his battalion between the trains, and the most likely approach route to the trains that could be taken by those feathered fellows. Big difference in my view
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